I don't think I would have been a writer if I hadn't been a mother. I wanted to construct something that contained some of these feelings that I had, some of these discoveries or revelations.

This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.

Write the book you want to read, the one you cannot find.

Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.

Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, Question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, Just let go, Just be.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

nothing she did or said was quite what she meant but still her life could be called a monument shaped in a slant of available light and set to the movement of possible music

Anyone's childhood can be an act of disablement if rehearsed and replayed and squinted at in a certain light. . .

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

The scolding voice is her own, so abrasive and quick, yet so powerless to move her.

Rebecca woke up with her knees hurting and her fingers ice-cold, and the specifics of her life returned to her as the dream disappeared: weekend, hotel room, Baguio, memory, memory, memory.

Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom. If you may have everything by asking in His Name, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is.

It's what I do well - I write about things that make people uncomfortable. That's probably the only thing I do better than my peers.

I'd never say no to surgery in the future, because I feel like, as I get older, I'm going to face temptation more.

He stopped everything behind the plate and hit everything in front of it.

One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.

I don't understand American football at all. It looks like all-in wrestling with crash helmets.

Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson.

Seamen three! what men be ye? Gotham's three Wise Men we be. Whither in your bowl so free? To rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine, And our ballast is old wine.

Any time you get a chance to play a great role, I consider all the qualities I may or may not have attributed to that character and how I would fit into the story.